Oliver Haslam·

Former Tesla Exec Confirms Work On An Electric Speedboat

Tesla might be all about building electric vehicles that run on land, but one former company executive has confirmed that his new company is working on taking to the water instead.

Tesla’s former head of global manufacturing John Vo was incharge between 2011 and 2017 and now his Blue Innovations Group (BIG) has confirmed that it’s working on a high-performance electric speedboat called the R30.

In an interview with Electrek, Vo says that he’s hoping to be able to borrow some manufacturing ideas from the car world, ditching traditional boat-building methods to help make mass production possible.

Vo hopes to reach that volume by designing the 30-foot electric cabin cruiser for mass production utilizing automotive manufacturing techniques. Part of that plan involves eschewing typical boat manufacturing methods such as fiberglass or carbon fiber in favor of an aluminum hull as well as using a battery that is structurally integrated as part of the boat’s frame.

As for when the R30 will be ready, that’s going to be in 2024. But a prototype is set to be shown off at CES in January 2023 with four beta models hoped to be ready by October 2023.

Pricing? Around $300,000 each which sounds like a lot, but isn’t all that far away from the kind of price you can expect to pay for a compatible boat with a traditional method of propulsion.

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